Comedy Bicycle

Navigating my love life is like
Riding one of those comedy bicycles

When I steer right, it goes left
When I steer left, it goes right

If I want it, I can’t have it
If I have it, I can’t want it

I tried something different with you
Hid how much I wanted it

That worked for all of 5 seconds
Before I veered catastrophically into a ditch

Now I’m back here again
Patching up the fractures to my spine
And to my heart

Wondering if maybe next time
I should stick to walking.

Blacksmith

if i was asked, a few years back
how life is
I would have said
“life is vindictive and cruel”

I would have described
how it coaxes you into being vulnerable and soft
and then with perfect timing,
kicks you with all the force it can muster

I have been taught since then, to stay with feelings such as this
to ask with curiosity
“What kind of a being struck is this?”

When a blacksmith forges iron,
she must heat it until it glows red, then orange, yellow
more heat and it will glow white - this is too much,
that orange-yellow phase is the forging heat.

It is at this stage that she may do her work

It is no use striking when iron is cold,
its brittle unresponsiveness can not be shaped
at best it will do nothing,
at worst it will shatter

like that, it is no use striking me when
my guard is up,
when i am protected
i won’t change then
any efforts will meet with tough resistance

it is only if I am willing to be made hot enough to soften
and there, submit to every blow
that I can be forged
into what I might become

Blanket

Every time I met you my heart cried out
“Yes!”

That night you stayed over you helped me
see the stars from my bedroom window for the first time.
Your body, your voice, everything about you was perfection.

I wanted to do it all again, immediately.
But that wasn’t an option.

So instead I tracked down some vegan fluff
to make into a blanket for an outdoor stargazing date.

It seemed like the logical next step -
I planned to borrow a telescope from Westminster Reference Library

But when I tried to construct the blanket I messed up.

First I messed up the edges, got the size wrong.
Remeasured and recut in a panic, using the same material but making everything smaller.

And then I messed up the tension: everything came out all wonky.
My housemate laughed at it: “is that art?”

I almost took scissors to the lot that night. Raging, cursing my clumsy hands and over enthusiasm.

I didn’t, though
I breathed deep and resolved to fix it.

I worked nights.
From a nautical themed hotel, I unstitched 10,000 stitches

And so it was with us. I was so keen to do anything for you that I messed up my own edges.
Remeasured and recut myself in a panic. I made myself smaller.

And I messed up the tension. Came across all wonky.

Words are not like stitches,
No matter how deep I breathe, they remain, marked “Message Deleted” on whatsapp

I wished I could have unsaid 10,000 lines, but I couldn’t.

I finished the blanket in the end.
Picked your favourite colours and poured love into it as if I was fashioning an amulet.

But it was hopeless

There was I thinking I could have kept you warm.
But you never needed a blanket,
you were already hottest person I ever touched.

Book

i am a fast reader
but if i were to read you,
I would read you slowly

i would run my fingers
down the curve of your spine
and fall in love
with the way
you open in my hands

i would savour everything

i would read the introduction
and the preface
and the author’s notes

enjoying the anticipation
of waiting
for the first chapter

in the same way
i watched you one time
taking little bits of coffee foam
onto your taste buds

i would take your syllables
into my mouth
trying them out
in delicate
whispers between
my lips

if i were to read you,

i would lose myself
so completely
in your deep
descriptive
passages

that for that night

you would
become
my world

Chemistry

The genius of Mendeleev:
when he created the periodic table,
he left blanks.

When other scientists attempted to categorise the elements
they forced everything fit their pattern -
as if they had discovered all the elements already
and only needed to organise them properly.

Mendeleev instead oriented himself toward the future.
Dared to believe that there was more to know
than was already known
and although his simpler design was full of holes
he turned out to be right.

After a breakup,
I try to arrange my life using the pieces I already know
This person belongs here in this space:
Love interest, group 1, highly reactive

I obsess over what once was, what was lost
and if I’ll ever get it back

But what if I could be more like Mendeleev
and leave a space?

You said we didn’t have chemistry
when you disappeared with my outer electrons

Now I wait, open,
hoping to discover
what it is that will fill this void.

Delivery

When I moved to Lithuania, I packed a box
of all the things we treasured most,
in there, my margaret miller nettle painting
the cutlery set your parents gave us
my projector for movies and cutting sewing patterns,
my favourite shoes, your favourite shoes
your hiking boots, your yurga earrings
those beautiful ceramics
my tiny percolator

when the box went missing, i was crushed,
raged against the service
wrote angry emails
but nothing could ever get it back
those treasured things were gone forever.

but they were just things
we had each other

We had the dates, the trips we planned and went on
the dresses and skirts I made for you,
that you wore even though I didn’t know how to sew
the hesitant requests I made of you
“swim in this icy river with me, after dark, naked”
that you went along with, beautifully, cheerfully
that punch I took once to protect you

The 2 poems I wrote, one revealed drunkenly
the strange compliments I hand fished
from the lithuanian sky

I loved the sounds you made when you were tired
the way you would tell me to go to my corner
the way you patiently walked with me while I gathered lichen
that time we missed the bus home
the way you smiled

all this talk of loving myself, of being strong
makes no sense
because

I loved you with no backup, no delivery insurance

5 years ago, you took by breath away
and I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back

Heart strings

I remembered yesterday,
standing on your carpet
how it is that a violin makes its sound.

like this

The bow bonds with the string
and as it is drawn,
pulls the string with it.

The string bends out of shape
stretching to its limit to follow the bow
until such a point
it can not stand it anymore.

Then, under its own tension,
it lets go,

returning to its natural state.

This cycle repeats thousands of times a second.

Attachment, bending, letting go
into attachment again

And from that process
a note emerges.

I read a book once that said
that in falling in love,
we bond with another.

That we bend ourselves
to our limits
to maintain that bond
until such a point that
we cannot stand it anymore

and in that moment

we let go of each other
to hold onto ourselves.

I don’t know if this is true,

but standing on your carpet,

I wondered if perhaps this is why
the sound of a violin
can fill me with such sadness

that perhaps our hearts
obey the same mechanism

and as I listen to a single note,

my heart is resonating with
a thousand stories
of love and loss

Her body

Why then,
would I ever want her body,

having held
your body
in my arms?

Having felt each tender contour;
having felt the sunshine underneath your skin.

Why would I ever want their bodies?
or their clumsy lips not knowing
where to go or how to answer mine.

I have tasted perfection
and didn’t know it
thinking every drink would taste as sweet.

It doesn’t.

Honeysuckle

To the divine feminine

That night i was with you i felt
you draw up water from your roots
becoming intoxicating
like honeysuckle

the softness in your eyes, your hair
expansive, glowing

seductive

i felt myself occupying a space
i never knew before
some divine masculine

and inside i burn with
the knowledge that
this is not about art.

this is about being lovers.

where do we learn the art of love today?
from whom?

internet forums, french cinema
and bad pornography?

this sex, no more than jumping:

a leap of faith,
brief ecstasy,
a letting go,
relief

this is the merest shadow of another way to love

in some strange ancient way,
like remembering a long forgotten dream
i can hear the dragon in you
and know that i was born to fly her

King Arthur

everyone else used force

that’s why they never managed to get the sword out
they would attempt to wrench it out with might
but fail
because the sword had bonded with the stone
and the wound had become part of the stone’s identity

arthur used no force

he placed his hands around the sword’s hilt
and he read the two inscriptions
like instructions on each side
one said “Take me up”
the other “Cast me away”
he became one with
excalibur
the only sword sharp enough to separate
what is us from what isn’t
he extended his consciousness deep inside it
and reached into its edges
testing every boundary
until it became clear
what was sword and what was not
and in that moment
of perfect understanding
he saw how
to pull it from the rock

Korg

i’ve always said that
i’m afraid of driving

being trapped between two lines
with destruction either side
is not my idea of a good time

so much so, that
the day i almost hit a police car
i swore that i would never drive again

you on the other hand, work with cars.

you are a body worker, welding metal plates
and powder coating, finishing.

i’ve always felt comfortable with you
you drive effortlessly,
you know cars inside out
from years of fixing the breaks and wounds
caused by reckless drivers

one day
you took me into your tiny studio
with its analogue synthesizer -
vintage 70s
(they really knew how to build stuff back then)

and for the sake of curiosity
you let me try it out

at first, a tentative exploring

a few wrong notes
the twisting of a dial,

mirror neurons forging new synapses

then, rising out of nowhere

that sound.

a whirlwind of beating pulsations
and growls and sighs
oscillating resonance
a barely contained not-enough-hands

there was fire in that circuitry

and looking back i realise
that what we are afraid of is
just the faintest shadow of what we are

driving, with its safety codes
and rules and regulations
its white lines marking parking spaces
is not for me

there’s a different kind of beast
i want to ride

Lemons

there was a slice of lemon in the glass

i ate it whole
not picking out the good bits
as i used to

it was sour in my mouth -
the flesh, the zest and pith combined

but after eating it
the sensation of lemon stayed with me
vibrant and shimmering

like i had briefly become a lemon

they say there are 3 poisons in this life:
craving, aversion and ignorance
like flesh and zest and pith

i took a bite of life
and tasted all at once

and it was sour in my mouth,
but after eating it
the sensation of life stayed with me
vibrant and shimmering

life gave me a lemon

but i didn’t make lemonade
because the lemon was too fresh
and smelled too good

life gave me a lemon
and i ate it

Mario

In mario
at the end of the level,
we are told ‘your princess is in another castle’

and so she is
the archetype is not the person
i guess i’ve always known that,
but for a short while, with you, i believed
it could be

and i feel such gratitude for the encounter
with beauty that made me feel that way

Moon

the optical resonator of a laser consists
of two mirrors, one fully reflective, one half

The light oscillates between these two surfaces,
becoming more in phase with each reflection`until the beam emerges
powerful and aligned

I think of this as I remember how it was
with you that I learned why they call it
“making” love

These feelings are not stumbled upon randomly,
fully formed,
but roused from almost nothing -
that first slight touch made, reflected, and reflected back again
amplified until your smile is bright enough
to wake the neighbours

It is this secret of being in tune
that allows something so small
to become so big

It is this secret that means
the light from a laser that fits in the palm of your hand
can reach the moon

Open heart surgery

And like that,
the door closes as gently as it was opened

the surgeon’s work completed
just a mark left,
a tender spot
to show the place in my heart
where you entered and
where you left

i will remember always

every muscle has two functions
to pull and to let go
the heart is just another muscle:
if it can’t let go, it’s broken

but my god, this letting go
every part of me
resists

one day, perhaps
we will find that door again

one day, perhaps
knock, and enter

and one day, perhaps
find, like the trees in that Max Richter composition

a love that has been growing
in all the time
since it was cut down

Peaches

We bought two peaches
but we did not eat them

we were saving them for a suitable time,
wrapped them up in napkins, washed them

but there was no suitable time
the peaches remained uneaten

I found them in my bag once you had gone
bruised and damaged from the travelling
and ate them both,

their pink juices staining
the white napkin

we could never be together, you and I
because we eat ice cream so differently.
You eat it slowly, savouring it

like i used to, once.

now i eat fast
to get the peak experience of ice cream

i want every flavour combination hitting my tongue all at once

because there’s no way around it
the ice cream will be gone in the end

we should enjoy it
while it is here.

Prairie

A wild prairie contains over 230 species of plant.
The biomass it creates far exceeds any agricultural monoculture.
It is resilient to pests, to drought, to floods.

However, if you want to make a prairie from scratch,
you can plant all the right species, care for them, water them,
but the prairie will not take.

It will only ever be an approximation of a prairie.

A real prairie needs one last ingredient: fire.

When you burn a prairie, from the outside
it looks like total devestation.

But inside, a transformation is happening.

Fire activated seeds are enabled.
Unwanted plants are removed from the ecosystem,
and out of this dry charred landscape, a real prairie will form.

Resilient, flowering, beautiful,
with every species in dynamic equilibrium.

When I wake up in the morning,
I have a few moments of respite before the pain sets in
and then I remember
how I burned everything we had to the ground

I forget why

Preview

It’s unstable now,
the painting that you are.

Layers of paint
painted onto other layers of paint
in an attempt to follow
the latest fashion.

But now it is precarious:
add a single drop to it and
it will collapse.

It is the preview tonight.

There are people drinking fizzy white wine
and talking about jazz.

You watch your painting.

A clump of paint comes loose,
burdened under its own weight,
and falls onto the recently
cleaned carpet.

Shit.
You feel a heaviness in your chest.
You remember all the bills you have to pay.
Promises made and broken.
Unfulfilled obligations.
Environmental destruction.
The desperation of living.

But then you notice something.
The empty space left behind
isn’t empty at all.

And you remember a story from your childhood
about a painting discovered in a garage,
that had an old master under the surface.

You take your painting to the back room.
Remove layer upon layer with cotton buds
and white spirit.

There was no old master underneath, though.
Of course there wasn’t.

But in the process you were transformed.
You realised that perhaps you don’t need to add anything to yourself.
Perhaps you are already perfect.

Runaway truck ramp

At my Dad’s school there was a tradition.

On the first Monday of term,
the second years
would round up the first years
and beat them up.

They called it “Basher Monday”.

Like this,
there are some pains
that pass through
generations.

When I said I didn’t want children,
it wasn’t because I didn’t want them.

It was because I overheard
at a bus shelter
a child receiving
a dose of the pain its parents
had hidden from themselves.

The world, too, is sick.
A runaway truck of violence that contains
the sum total of our individual unconscious pains.
War, climate change, pollution, inequality,
injustice are all on board.

But like the pebbles on a runaway truck ramp
each one of us has the potential
to absorb part of the impact.

To take the pain we feel
and transform it.
To seek out its roots,
to feel its towering intensity,

• and do everything it takes not to pass it on

The lives of our children depend on it.

There are two things that give me the hope
that we can change the world:

That when my Dad was a second year,
“Basher Monday” ended.

And that together, a million 10 gram pebbles
can stop a ten tonne truck

Solar Power

The inverter filled the room
6 feet wide and tall and gleaming
white

the first of its kind in England

you sat at its feet,
holding in your hands the switch
to 50,000 Watts.

the power itself came from the sun
collected by 300 panels gleaming on the roof
and piped through armoured cable
to this tiny room that hummed with electricity

no, you didn’t put the power there.
that was the work of some larger organisation

yet in that moment, you held the keys to a beating heart.
a force so great that handled incorrectly
it could kill us both.

and you switched it on

with a smile on your lips
and mischief in your words

there is no training we can have for courage
after all the books are read,
and the continuing personal development session is over
there will always be a point where we must step into
the unknown

yes, i’ve read every piece of bad advice
about what it means to be courageous

now i remember - just this.

Statue

If you walk down
Covent Garden
You will see it lined with
marble statues

But pay attention to them
they are not statues at all
They are waiting for your attention
to come alive

To those that have vision
there is life in everything
There are faces in the headlights
a heartbeat in the city noises
a hero in a paperclip

Those that have vision can bring life to
what was just earth and metal
and in doing so
make everyone’s world a little lighter

Studio

i went into my dad’s studio
and there was the most beautiful painting

it was of a lemon

i know this because
at that point the only things
he painted were lemons and sardines.

i was pretty sure this one wasn’t a sardine,
so i concluded that it must be a lemon

“that looks great”, i said
“yeah. it does”, he said.
“it’s not finished, though”, he said

“it looks finished”, i said
“it’s not, though”, he said

i went down to the studio the next day

it looked like he’d been up all night

he was sitting in a wicker chair
gazing at the painting
and smoking a cigarette

the painting from yesterday was gone,
and in its place was a canvas of the same size and shape
except that it appeared to be totally covered in mud brown

he’d destroyed the entire thing

“what happened to the painting”, i said

he drew my attention to a tiny corner of the painting i’d overlooked
where a ragged stripe of pink
lay across a deep blue square

“look at that colour combination”, he said.
“that is true”, he said

a week later the painting was different again
i don’t even remember if that colour combination
was still there in the final piece

what i do remember is that
he’d been working on that painting
for two months solid
12 hours a day, he worked from dawn to dusk
and a week before the show
he threw it all away
for a tiny patch of colour
that was true

Two pianos

in our school hall were two pianos
a pristine yamaha
and a second hand bluthner

although we used the yamaha for concerts
it was the bluthner i was always drawn to

i loved that piano
it had this beautiful dusky softness
and haunting resonances
despite the fact that
it had been played constantly
by heavy handed teenagers
and had someone else’s name
scratched into its inside lid

perhaps
it wasn’t despite

perhaps
it was because of

joseph beuys has a piece called
infiltration for piano
it is a piano wrapped in felt
an unplayable instrument
locked away
and although it hurts me to look at it
it serves as a reminder that
we are here
to be used
to be taken for a ride
to be played again and again
until some notes don’t sound,
until our keys break
and our b flat
becomes slightly too flat
to ever be fixed

the most beautiful people
in this world
are not the untouchable
ones we see on the covers
of magazines

they are the ones who
have opened their hearts
again and again
and allowed themselves to be played until they’re soft

they say you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover
i disagree
the cover of every great book
is velvet
made that way
by the hands of
every
one
who ever held it tightly in the night
and enchanted by its mystery
feverishly turned over its pages
in the discovery of
each ecstatic word

Zen

I read in a book
that zen is
eating your rice and
washing up your bowl.

I didn’t understand that then

Because I thought that love
was only contained within
romantic gestures.

In starlit walks, slow dances
and romantic city breaks to the
hotel with the highest rating on tripadvisor.

But now, as I sit alone
in this empty kitchen,
I realise that you were right:

that love makes its home in every moment
in the simplest of daily activities,

in the folding of a t-shirt,
in the watering of a plant,
in the buttering of a sandwich right to the edge,
and in those few stolen moments before lights out

love, over the years
you eroded yourself into my heart,
in ways I hardly even noticed
like water over rock,
and the pattern you left
will be in me always